Cautionary Tales For Children
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Wizard's Wands

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Make your own beautiful wizardís wand

One of the first shops that Harry Potter visited when Hagrid took him to Diagon Alley was Ollivanders, the wand shop to buy his most important possession, his wand. Wands can be made from a variety of materials, after all Hagrid used an old umbrella as a wand! Yours will be made from paper. But do not be deceived it will be every bit as magical as the real wands used in the film, and if you make it carefully will look just as good. . . .
Because glue is used on the paper to harden it, this wand is a made of a type of papier mache. You can paint your want in any colour you want, and the instructions show you how to make you wand look distressed (that is a technical term that furniture makers use to describe the process of artificially aging an item), and really ancient; fit for Harry Potter himself.. . .
The wand painting is built up in three layers. When painting the wand make sure you use paints that dry to be water proof, otherwise the next layer you put on will wipe off the previous layer. Paints you can use are acrylic, decorating emulsion (latex paint, US) and or spray paint. . . .
To create the gold highlights on the detailing you can use a gold felt pen, gold gel pen, gold nail varnish (if youíre careful) or if you want the exact gold effect shown in the photos, then you should use a special gold rubbing paste (I used a product called Gold Finger from Daler Rowney), which frame makers use to make picture frame look golden. But any thick gold paint will do and you can put it on with your finger, if youíre careful. For the really special silver metallic effect I used silver-leaf, you could also use gold-leaf. This isnít expensive, and is not at all necessary, but it is nice to try it if you have the chance. (if you are going to use gold or silver leaf, then ask in the art shop or look on the web for instructions on how to apply it. Itís not hard, but you will need a small pot of gold size (an artists liquid glue that dries tacky).. . .
If you donít have any of this stuff, then you can still make a lovely wand following the instructions, as you can see from the images below and even more in the wonderful wand images in the Your Models section. People have used great inventiveness to create their wands, they have used bits of wood or bark to trim then, used string or even cooked spaghetti instead of the glue gun patterning, and all manner of different types of paint and finishes to make their wands unique.

For a detailed set of instructions and an explanation of how to do the distressing, which is very easy and great fun, please see the instruction sheet which is available in both A4 and US Letter sizes. Just click on the size you want to download.

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We can't wait to see the pictures of what youíve made. Kids love it when the things you made together are published, so go on upload a picture of what you made. It's easy, just go to your dadcando My Page and upload your pictures into this project and we'll put one of them right here in the project picture gallery.

To give you the higest quality and the shortest download time, most of our downloads are supplied in Adobe PDF format for your convenience. Adobe Reader is standard on most computers, but if you do not have it, you can get the most up to date version free from Adobe, here.

Your downloaded projects

Posted by tuskel - I used a bit different method to make the wand , since I don't have a glue gun (yet, I have been looking). I taped together two round ice lolly sticks and trimmed the end for right size. Then I used a sheet of paper and double-sided sticky tape, added a bit more paper for the handle and end, and some twisted strips of d-s sticky tape for the decoration. I covered it all with kitchen roll and PVA and left to dry. The next day, after it was dry, I used some acrylic paint to make it look wooden and added details with golden marker. I know I should have sprayed it with varnish, because after a week of play, the gold has almost rubbed off. It was really bright and shiny when I drew it on, though. Oh well, I need to touch it up a bit. :)

Posted by jovisjoseph - it took almost 2 days to complete it ...but itl looks beautifull right

Posted by mdub - Two wands made for my kids. I'll make some wooden ones next time round, as the spell casting, has worn out the paper ones.

Posted by KarenSmedley - This wand was made at school, we are very proud of it.

Posted by Adventurer - My sister and I had fun making wands before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 came out!

Posted by tinascratch - This wand was made by spray-painting with black first, then painting with nail polish. This created a nice underlayer of black that shows through somewhat, especially in the crevices. The very end of the wand has a medium-sized blue craft gem. At the midpoint of the wand is an old sterling ring I found that was too large for me but the perfect size to put on the wand as the glue detailing was drying.

Posted by jinesta1 - My design, a snake wand, the snake was made with paper and glue.

Posted by metasue - This is one of many wands, multiple layer colors and designs... Christmas craft project!!!

Posted by teckner - Just a little picture I took about a while ago. I couldnt find any other projects I had made and recently got a Mac after our hard drive crashed so we lost a lot of our pictures

Posted by danub - My boys and I had our first go at wands today. Top is mine red one is Dylans age 5, 3rd is Dawsons age 11 and the bottom is an extra we tried everything first on. We all had a blast on a rainy day and the boys did all their own painting. Thanks for a great project were all lookin forward to starting some more from your great site.

Posted by Stopdroproll - Our favorite project was the wizard wands. We've made several for ourselves and friends and they've lasted a few years!

Posted by TwinsisterWendy - It is so easy to make!!
We had a lot of fun trying all sorts of different painting techniques.. and we are not done yet! Making one for each Hogwarts teacher we have on our next Harry potter themecamp with the boy- and girlscouts!

Posted by bayoubooks - 16 Children completed wands and quills in the second session of our Hogwarts workshop! 7/24/09

Posted by AnnieG - We made 8 as gifts which were well exclaimed over.
:)

Posted by ella14 - You can't see it. But when you are suppost to fill in the ends with glue gun, on top of the glue i put glow in the dark paint, because i didn't have the requirments for a real lumos wand. But it works just as good.

Posted by thorswolf - After doing a few of the paper wands, we decided to try with wood instead. We collected wand quality wood (fighting off a few bowtruckles) and I polished the wood, then treated it with the Dadcando method.

Posted by cable98 - My son and I made these wand and he donated them to be raffled off to help fund our school store. The store, sells items and uses the money to help children who are in need. They purchase school supplies, backpacks and warm winter coats, gloves, hats... whatever a child might need.

Posted by Silvercloud - I worked my wands a little different. First I started off just like the tutorial. Then I worked with papermache. The wands are stuffed with papertowel strips and PVA glue. That made them very stabil. Then I also covered them layer by layer with papermache strips. I then worked again with the tutorial using hot glue and different materials.

Posted by moonfire - This was my first wand. My husband calls it my macaroni-and-cheese wand!

Posted by sarahjanehorner - This is my wand, it was such an easy project and the wand looks really nice

Posted by gourds - This is my wand project. All my pictures are kinda blurry... There is a paintbrush, four plain paper tubes, a paper tube covered in hot glue, and my very first wand I ever tried that is a tube covered in hot glue, then painted, then more hot glue, and painted more. I thought it would be different colors but when it dried it just looks brown!

Posted by cihuacatzin - we made this one together my kid was amazaed i surprise her!!! and basically it is made from a simple paper

Posted by pauljwallace - we adapted the plan by using cooked spaghetti to make the pattern!

Posted by merlyn - The wands are made of paper. The wand at the top is the first wand I made. The one underneath it with the sun pattern on it was achieved by scanning in ancient symbols through my computer. I then had to cut each symbol out, glue it to the wand before painting them gold. the third wand has a crystal in it. I've sold several of these wands to which all proceeds have gone to a no-kill animal shelter in Illinois; the project is called "Wands for Winnie" in honor of my late feline friend. Hope you all like the picture...Merlyn

Posted by spoffk - I used the Wand Box pattern to make the box. I had some trouble getting the hot glue to go all the way down the paper tube, but it seemed pretty sturdy.

Posted by dramaticdruid - This one is made from just the hot glue, and computer paper. I used markers first black, and then brown to create the wood look and then finished the accents with the rub 'n buff gold patina.

Posted by sallyGrist - here is a pic of a few of your infamous wands that I knocked up over the summer.

Posted by fzxguy - What an amazing website! Your instructions are wonderful and easy to follow. I have almost no craft experience and was able to make this great looking wand and box in a couple of hours. Thanks!

Posted by koppel - here is all my wands together, as you can see, i made a few

Posted by jedififer - This is the wand I made the other day. With about a day, maybe a day and a half it is really easy to do. I liked the vine look and did the best I could do to recreate one. I used green glitter for the leaves, and gold paint for the vines. I used a walnut spray paint for the wood look.

Posted by xFayex - First attempt.. lilac/seafoam green are my favorite colors <3 I might do a green one to compliment this one ^^

Posted by bwente - Nice examples! Great for inspiration.
I used a pen that I got as a promotional item, that had a blue LED in it it that lit up when you pushed the top. I took it apart and extend the lengths by soldering longer wires to it. I was able to use the existing battery case and switch in to the bottom of the wand. I had the glue sticks on hand and some left over spray shellac and only had to buy 4 bottles of acrylic paint which I found in the discount bin. The faux wood/bark effect was made by running the hot glue tip back through the hardened glue.
Thanks again, my daughter loves it.

Posted by alyssadelacour - This wand has to be one of my best. I got the idea for the handle topper ( golden rose) from one of the pictures on here. Like it? I know I do, and to think, it only took me about 45 minutes!

Posted by pixeltrash - These were so easy and fun to make! My 7-yo and I are
making a HP tree for Christmas this year and plan to decorate it with all of the great wizard projects from your site! Thanks for the instructions!

Posted by nepenthe - 2nd wand made which I gave to my daughter's friend for his birthday.

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Fabulous paper planes

For most kids (boys and girls) paper folding (origami) starts with making a paper airplane. Folded out of any rectangular piece of paper (including paper money for those rich kids on the block) the paper plane is a fantastic thing. It's so simple, a paper airplane will only take a minute to fold up, and yet it really does something when you've made it. Like riding a bike, you never really forget how to make a paper plane, but in case you have forgotten, or would like to try some new paper plane designs, you'll find the clearest instructions on dadcando, ready for you to teach a whole new generation of kids the pleasure of areo-engineering and flight dynamics from a simple sheet of paper.

Use the awesome dadcando downloadable printables to make the coolest paper airplanes on the planet, see which design can fly the furthest, and if you have an idea for another colour pattern or even an alternative folding scheme, why not send it in to us and if it's good enough we'll put it up with the others, for everyone to enjoy. Click here to send us your plane designs.

Have a look at these fantastic new templates . . .
the RAF Tornado GR4 , the Tornado F-3 and now for the first time, Concorde . All my kids could say was... "Cool, they look like real planes!" Build them and fly them in 5 minutes. Why wait for the kids to come home, unlock the big kid in you, itís the best kind of paper craft youíve ever seen.

Featured Project

MicroCards
MicroCards are
miniature playing cards that can be printed out on one sheet of paper.
Just cut them out and play on the go!